The Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age Architectural Aspirations 18791901 (USED)

St. Martin's Press

Product Description : From the Introduction by Louis Achincloss quotThe role the Vanderbilts played in the social life of New York City and of all the rural resorts and watering places to which the wealthy of that metropolis regularly retreated was at least comparable to that of the Medici in Florence As patrons of the arts the Vanderbilts certainly had their lapses but what family including their Tuscan counterpart would not in amassing so gargantuan a pile Edith Wharton their severest critic wrote that they were entrenched aposin a sort of Thermopylae of bad taste from which apparently no force on earth can dislodge themapos but today art critics are becoming more aware of how many fine things were included in the Vanderbilt treasures Perhaps their greatest fault in taste lay in their seeming inability to dispense with any of their artifacts even in their largest houses Beauty can be lost even in a clutter of beauty The whole is not necessarily greater than its partsquot Includes ae